Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Joanna Newsom, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Reece Witherspoon, Jordan Christian Hearn, Taylor Bonin, Jeannie Berlin, Eric Roberts, Serena Scott Thomas, Maya Rudolph, Martin Dew, Michael Kenneth Williams, Hong Chau, Shannon Collis, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, Martin Short, Sasha Pieterse.
A film that challenges its audiences to stay with it to the end, that constantly has a sly sparkle in its eye as if it knows more than the audience will ever glean from it and one that ultimately challenges certain perceptions and insights is nothing new, it has been done before and perhaps in more astounding ways; yet most of those films never become cult classics and Inherent Vice has all the qualities that thrust into that well-versed category as well as reminding the more observant just how good a modern film can be into alluding to the classic Film Noir.
It has often been remarked that the 1970s, along with industrial strife and a political wilderness that the bottom was scrapped so heavily the gauge marks are still felt worryingly today, was the decade that taste forgot and taste is an emotion that befits Inherent Vice; a so called Marmite film, one that in nearly all respects delivers so much in its presentation but one that could quite easily be seen by some as being pretentious and kitsch.
As with all good Film Noirs, the off kilter detective is in trouble but when an ex walks back into his life and tells him of a plot involving her boyfriend, his wife and her lover, his problems become so much more disturbing, surreal and dreamlike. When adding in the psychopathic Lt. Det. Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, a man with delusions of grandeur, an underlying affliction to negative thoughts to the Hippy era and whose wife is as dangerous as he is, into the investigation, then who would blame the P.I. for rolling up more than a dozen herbal cigarettes.
The biggest complaint maybe the feeling of the unresolved, but that’s surely the point, the narrative decrees that the story, recounted in part by Joanna Newsom’s Sortilège, takes you to the point where nobody knows what’s going to happen next because it is holding a mirror up to life. The criminals may have been taken out, the situation may well be in hand but as for the resolve, when is anything in life truly ever been finally determined and straight?
It might not be Joaquin Phoenix’s greatest hour on screen, after all it’s doubtful that anything could ever beat his performance as Johnny Cash in Walk The Line, but as the doped out Private Investigator Larry “Doc” Sportello, he is in absolute marvellous form and with a supporting cast made up of the likes of Josh Brolin, a sensational Katherine Waterston, Benicio Del Toro, and small but enjoyable performances by Reece Witherspoon and the much missed on screen in a role he excels in Martin Short, Inherent Vice may be confusing but you cannot ignore its stature and addition to the Noir theme.
The 1970s may have been the decade that taste forgot but there is nothing unpalatable about Inherent Vice, clever, well filmed and above all strangely poetic.
Ian D. Hall